


What are you thinking about

by Laura_Sinele



Series: Fictober 2019 drabbles [18]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Between S02 and S03, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gay Billy Hargrove, Love Confessions, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Coital, Post-Coital Cuddling, Protective Steve, Protectiveness, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 05:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21113360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laura_Sinele/pseuds/Laura_Sinele
Summary: Steve wants to know what Billy's thinking about. Turns out is a bit more complicated than expected.





	1. What are you thinking about

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fictober19 prompt 20: “You could talk about it, you know”
> 
> I honestly had no idea what to do with this. I'm working on each prompt on the same day or the day before, though I try to decide the theme and basic plot about four days prior to publication. I had absolutely no idea about this one. My husband suggested to make it chapter 3 of Magpies, but in that one neither Draco nor Harry are bottling things up, so this line didn't really fit there. Then, yesterday, the 19th, something unpleasant happened to me and I decided I could use this prompt as an outlet. I went through my ships and the idea of pouring myself in my headcanon of Billy Hargrove became strong (mind you. I have not seen season 3, and I am aware things get complicated in that one to say the least, but let me bask into my post-season 2 repressed and traumatised baby who finds solace and love and understanding in Steve’s superhuman empathy and general gorgeousness). 
> 
> Trigger warning: mentions of rape and abuse. 
> 
> Because I think it is important to share this kind of things, after the fic you'll find a chaper dedicated to what happened yesterday and how pouring it in a piece of Harringrove fanfiction helped.

They had just had amazing sex, because of course they had. Because that’s what very much in love 18-year-olds who already knew each other’s bodies did. They were lying naked in Steve’s queen size bed, sheets rumpled at their feet, the perfectly normal sounds of the forest at night dripping in through the open window. It had been a long time since the last time there were strange noises in the woods, and things in their secretive little world felt easy and warm, like a well worn leather jacket. 

Steve lay on his belly, head propped on his left arm, looking at Billy lazily. Billy lay on his back, left hand as a pillow, caressing his own bottom lip with his right index and middle finger, gaze lost beyond the ceiling.

“Does it hurt?”, asked Steve.

“Nah. You can bite me harder next time”, Billy winked at him cheekily and Steve grabbed his fingers and bit them softly, making a fierce face. “Aw, you’re so cute”, cooed Billy. And he was surprised to find that he meant it. 

“Why were you touching your lips, then?”

Billy took a deep breath and let out a halfhearted raspberry.

“Because you won’t let me smoke in your room and I miss the sensation”

“Come on!”

“Ah… I was thinking. Touching my lips is something I do when I zone out”.

Steve feigned surprise:

“You think?!”

“Ha, ha. So funny, pretty boy”, retorted Billy as he pinched Steve’s nipple.

“You know ‘pretty boy’ is not that poignant since I know you actually find me pretty?”

“Nah, I’m here for the money, babe”

They grinned until they snorted idle laughs. Steve rested his head on Billy’s shoulder, and Billy entwined his fingers in Steve’s soft, puffy locks. After a while, heartbeats and breathing in complete sync, Steve asked:

“What were you thinking about?”

Billy made a non committal sound and used his pillow-buried hand to cover and squish his eyes, pulling playfully on his grab of Steve hair. Steve didn’t complaint. Not only that, but Billy felt his soft dick twitch against his thigh.

“You’re a kinky bitch, Harrington”

“You love it”, said Steve with a wide, toothy smile and twinkling eyes. Billy loved that face of his, specially when it was him causing it, and him and only him enjoying the view. He got suddenly serious though, and watched with regret as Steve’s face fell, but started to talk anyway.

“I was thinking in something that happened at the gas station this morning. I stopped on my way to work and saw this car with a Cali plate, and I knew the guy who drove it. I didn’t want to meet him, but he saw me first and I had to, you know, make some small talk, until his wife came out of the lady’s room and they left. I was thinking that I am happy that I didn’t freak out or punch him, and that I threw away the business card he gave me with his personal phone number written by hand”.

Steve kept quiet for a while in case Billy felt like sharing more details. He wrapped himself a little around Billy. Summer was almost there but the air was still cold and the aftersex heat was wearing off. Furthermore, by the way Billy had talked about meeting that man, it felt like he needed the contact, which wasn’t a common occurrence.

“Why didn’t you want to talk to him? Was he one of your dad’s friends?”

Billy stifled a laugh and drove his hand from Steve’s hair to his cheek, and then his lips. He turned his head to him and looked him in the eye.

“No. No, he wasn’t. He was just someone I don’t like anymore. I trusted him and he… he hurt me. He did very wrong things to me and I shut him out. I never thought I’d meet him in Hawkins of all places. But I feel good about it, all the time we were talking it felt like I was the man in charge. It was pretty cool”, he smiled and looked away from Steve again, but he kept brushing Steve's lips with the tips of his fingers. Steve felt an infinite fondness drown him because of that little, absent-minded caress, but not even that muffled his protectiveness-teinted curiosity.

“What happened with that guy? I mean, what- what did he do to you?”

“Nevermind. It was a long time ago. What’s done is done. There’s nothing else to it”.

“Well, you could talk about it, you know?”

Billy looked at him with both amusement and annoyance.

“Aren’t you sleepy?”

“There’s a hot, naked guy about to tell me something from his mysterious past in my bed. Can’t sleep”

“You’re a fucking smartass”

“You love it”

For the second time in the last ten minutes, Billy managed to repress an “I do”. He was growing anxious about letting it slide any time soon, and he also suspected that Steve said “You love it” that often just to mess with his brain and make him say the L word. He looked at Steve very intently trying not to seem worried, sighed and dove into it.

“Alright. You know how you are talking all the time about not knowing you swung both ways until you saw me at school?”. Steve nodded. “Well I just knew. I kept trying to get with girls because I just didn’t wanted to be gay. My father, well, you know. And mom was very religious, and I didn’t want to disappoint her above all things. One day I got home with my face fucked up because of a fight in the showers, you can imagine how it started. She asked and I just bursted out. She never told my father but she put me in one of those camps, you know? To turn you straight by the power of God or some bullshit. Told my dad it was Bible study to keep me out of making trouble. Well, this guy was my tutor, we all had one that had already gone through it. He was so fucking gorgeous, man. Like, movie star handsome, and he lifted weights and ran and played basketball. I saw him naked plenty of times after PE activities and all was well because I had a lot of practice thinking in disgusting things while in the showers with other guys. But that day we were the last ones and he said some bullshit about correcting my posture on defence… while naked and wet after the shower. Of course I got hard. And he blew me”

“The fuck?!”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see it coming, Harrington”

“I did but… Fuck!”

“It was good. I did him, too. We were at it all the time. Until my mom came to visit and, I swear, it was like being in prison. We had 30 minutes and two hugs every two weeks. And I told her so many lies about my conversion. And she was so happy. I couldn’t do it anymore, so I told him to stop. But he kept finding excuses to touch me and when I got hard he said I did wanted it and my brain just went white noise, and I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no. He was bigger, stronger and he had power in that freak show of a camp. I was fucked so I let him do it. Until I didn’t. He started to mess with me in class and what they called therapy, started rumors about me and put the other kids against me. So next time he tried to suck me off I hit him. I swear to you, Steve, I hit him so hard I broke his face, I went fucking crazy on him. And he made them all believe it had been me who wanted to rape him or something. It fucking ruined my life, my father says that’s what got my mother killed”.

“I am… ah, Jesus Fuck, Billy I’m so sorry”

“I’m okay. Honestly. I haven’t been okay for a long time but I am now. Talked to no one about it. Then my father got with Maxine’s mom and I started to pick up things about Max’s dad. And one day we were alone, I was about to leave, she was watching TV and they were talking about a little girl that had been raped. She started to cry and I stayed and we talked. She told me hers, I told her mine. We talk about it once a week or so. I’m a lot better. We had to leave Cali because of fucking psycho Max’s father, so I also stopped bumping into my tutor. I’m not normal, I’m a mess when it comes to feelings, but this Upside-Down thing, the nerds, Mrs Byers… It all feels like home. Still have to deal with my dad but… At least I don’t hate myself for being a homo. And I faced the fucker today. And I was okay. That’s about what I was thinking”.

Steve was in silence, looking at Billy with the most serious expression. He took his face and pressed a kiss to his lips, chaste but intense.

“I fucking love you, Hargrove. And I need that fucking bastard’s car model and plate number”, he said as he jumped off the bed and fished for his pants under it. 

“What the fuck, Harrington? It’s almost midnight”

“And Hopper works the night shift”, he said before winking and heading for the bathroom.

After a moment, Billy leaned against the bathroom’s door frame and watched Steve wash his face and start to do his hair. 

“What?”, asked Steve.

“Did you just say you love me?”

Steve froze, big doe eyes wide in shock.

“Did I?”

They looked at each other in silence, until Billy broke it, putting a piece of paper with the car brand, color, model and plate number next to the sink, and returning to the bed

“I love you too, pretty boy. Just don’t kill anyone for me. I’m the one with the bad reputation, that’ll make me look bad”.


	2. My own experience with sex abuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've tried to make this the least explicit possible. It is the real story of my abuser, his impact in my life during the next years and how I dealt with it all on top of other conflicts and suffering a bipolar desorder. DO NOT READ IF RAPE IS A TRIGGER FOR YOU//DO READ IF YOU NEED A STORY OF SURVIVAL AND ADVICE

I am a sex abuse victim. The abuse took place in the form of repetitive non consensual sex in the context of an established relationship, through guilt-tripping mostly, on occasion by overpowering me physically. 

The guilt-tripping went as follows: up until I was 22 my sex-drive used to be well above average. Now I know it was due to a hormonal unbalance and the hypomanic stages of my now diagnosed type II bipolar disorder. Back then, I saw it as a very defining trait of my identity, as I felt free, empowered and connected with my body and my lovers. 

I said lovers because I had several of them simultaneously. Everybody was informed and agreed to it. Some of them were and still are friends of mine and between them. It was all open, honest and healthy. 

My relationship with my abuser started with him being one of those lovers. Then, evolved into an “official” relationship, but still open. In a natural way, he became my only relationship, as the others either started exclusive relationships or had schedules incompatible with mine, while my boyfriend studied with me and I spent most of the time at his parent’s place to avoid the continued low-key psychological and emotional abuse of my father, but that’s another story.

Still, even though none of us was seeing anyone else, we agreed that our relationship was open. At one point, I mentioned I was planning on meeting one of my past lovers. Just meeting, nothing I said suggested there was going to be any kind of intimacy. He got angry. He didn’t lash out and, after a while of sulking, he reasoned that our relationship was still open but he was not comfortable with the idea of me meeting that particular person because there had been a romantic relationship, and he was willing to have and let me have other sexual relationships but not romantic ones. We debated cordially for a while and I accepted his point. Flash forward several months later at my faculty’s cantina: a very good friend, who actually became my lover later on in my life, and is not anymore but is still a very close friend, started to flirt with me jokingly, as we usually did. My boyfriend joined us at our table, we kept our conversation peppered with compliments and pick up lines and, at some point, it got hot. And it was okay, it was public knowledge that my boyfriend and I were polyamorous. My friend and I accompanied my boyfriend to meet a professor and, along the way, we were making plans for the afternoon. My boyfriend had something to do, at what rose the possibility of hanging out with my friend and see where all the spicy talk went. My boyfriend had been encouraging us and playing matchmaker all the while, and he said something along the lines of “sure, go ahead”, but when my friend and I started to discuss the logistic he got nervous. We noticed and exchanged worried looks, slowing the conversation down a notch. It was all very natural and open up until that moment, but the change in the mood was so obvious that I finally asked what was wrong. He said he wasn’t comfortable with me fucking one of my best mates because, well, he knew the guy. I couldn’t believe it at first. I remembered the first restriction: no ex-boyfriends. Now, not people that we both know. Because he said it in front of my friend, and my friend knew me quite well and recognised the look in my face as more than mildly annoyed, he hurried to say it was okay with him and asked me if I could still give him a lift. That way I avoided an argument with my boyfriend on the topic of “Is this restricting our openness as a couple becoming a trend?”. Not other prospects rose for me nor for him, and we never discussed exclusiveness again. 

Not long after that incident, I fell into a depression. Both the depressive state and the anti-depressants affected my libido enormously. I was practically never in the mood for sex. Sometimes I willingly made an effort when he initiated it, but I realised the experiences were not comfortable for me and forcing myself was only making it more difficult to get my sex-drive back. I explained this. He said it made sense. Next night he tried again. I said no. This went on for a couple of weeks. Then he got, not angry but, dramatic, and said he had lots of trust and self-esteem issues and, that if we didn’t have sex, he felt as if I didn’t love him. I explained for the umptenth time, and emphasized that he already knew this, that my low sex drive was a chemical catastrophe in my brain and had nothing to do with my love for him. That, if something, it was challenging my self perception, as I had identified with my sexuality and explored it confidently and freely from a very, very early age. This was hurting me as much or more as it was hurting him. He calmed down for another week or two. He brought the “I feel like you don’t love me anymore” discourse again. I decided to have sex with him that night. It was awful. I didn’t came nor wanted to. He insisted on making me. He stopped trying with his fingers when I closed my legs, since my words didn’t seem to be enough. That night passed and others came. I said no, he said yes, I said no, he was almost 6’5 feet tall (2 meters) and his hand was bigger than my face. He opened my legs by force (I think he thought it was roleplaying). That made me freeze and I let him have his way. I still tried to say no every next time. I eventually stopped saying yes or no. I just layed there. 

Now, when I started to tell this story to people, the most common first question was: why did you keep going to his place to sleep? The answer is simple: I did not see it as something as bad as going home and facing the tension and scorn and yells from my father. In the great scheme of things, I know now that what my boyfriend did was worse but, because of its duration in time and newness, the situation at my home felt much more real and unbearable. I still didn’t realize what my boyfriend was doing was rape. I just thought we had things to talk about and the moment to do it never came.

The first time I called it by its name it was like an epiphany. For some reason I remember it was March, and I remember I told him: “You’ve been doing it for six months”. We had an argument for an entirely different reason that I don't remember and it evolved into the fact that lately we were constantly arguing. I kept trying to get somewhere in that particular argument because it kept going in circles: he pointed out problems and I kept saying those weren’t what was wrong with us. He asked impatiently and loudly what was it then. And I bursted out, and I didn’t even know the words were inside me, I didn’t had the notion before talking: “Our problem is that you’ve been raping me for six months. You’ve been doing it for six months, and I say no, and you keep going at it and in the end I stopped saying no because it was easier than risking to get hurt. And so I can’t trust you anymore and that's why I snap at you for everything”. 

He was horrified. He covered his mouth with his hand and became pale. He sat down and whispered “It’s true. This is horrible. This is horrible, horrible. This is horrible.” He kept repeating that word. I told him I had never known it was rape until I said it out loud, and that now that we both knew, it had to stop. He was disgusted with himself and he stopped. For a couple of weeks. 

I never told him again what he was doing. I grew more and more wary of saying no. I just rolled with it: the non consensual sex and the relationship itself. That summer we ended it civilly, because there wasn't a moment we weren't at each other's throats, and we still remembered that we used to be friends. He had even pushed me against his wardrobe to make me shut up once. So we thought breaking up for good, and this is important, he specifically said “for good” and we agreed, was our best option. 

Then began the gaslighting. I don't know if it was intentional or he is actually that delusional. I had buried the fact that none or almost none of the sex I had had in the last year had been consensual, and moved on with my life. He was still my classmate, one of my closest friends and a constant presence in my social life. I told everyone to support him specially because I'd had more experience in breakups while he was more emotionally unstable in general (and everyone knew this for a fact). 

One day, two friends came to visit me to the store I managed. They asked how was I doing and I said I was fine, that in the end it was obvious that we could not be a couple. They exchanged disconcerted looks. "That's not what he's saying. He's telling everyone you've taken three months off and then you'll be back together". I was beyond shocked, specially by the specificity of it. Three months, he was saying. When they saw my reaction it was like opening a dam. They started to list all the apparently uncharacteristic things he was doing: he was drinking alcohol (he never did before), he was hard-core hitting on everyone, he was always trying to make plans with everybody and he would always talk about himself over any other thing. 

In the span of a few months, he got a girlfriend and dumped her in a very ugly fashion. Two days prior to their breakup, their love was all over his Facebook, and right before leaving for a job abroad he dumped her telling her openly that he didn't love her. By then, our interactions were minimal and I had been starting to flinch whenever he touched me, but I didn't pay much thought to it until this breakup and a very unfortunate line he told me. There was a farewell party for him and, at the end of it, he approached me and said that now that he was single again we could fuck every now and then. I felt cold all over and then fiery fury. I remember clenching my fists. I dismissed his offer politely but sternly, reminding him, as it had been nothing, that there had been issues between us regarding consent. He didn't seem much bothered by my answer. Later on I learned he was telling people he had gone abroad to fuck, so I guess my negative wasn't a big deal at the moment. After that night, "He used to rape me” was always on my mind, every single time someone mentioned him, I saw a picture of him or he contacted me. 

I decided to tell only to very few people, and still excusing him, when it was too obvious that I was avoiding him, and when I began to have trouble to trust my sex partners. I stopped excusing him eventually, but I never fully blamed him (not that I blamed myself). Years later, I had another boyfriend and I met a girl through him. We became friends, and at some point she told me she had just met a guy. It was my ex. There were months of debating between telling her or not. I settled for “he’s one for long term relationships”, since she preferred no strings attached. However, as she put it, she fell in love. Time passed, my relationship with the man that had introduced us ended, and so my meetings with her where more sporadic. In one of those, she told me she already knew what he did to me. That he had told her. So he knew why I stopped talking to him. 

I talked less and less with this girl, mostly through Facebook. At some point in time he and I exchanged messages. He wanted to talk, I was open to it but in a bad moment so I told him I needed to sort things out first. Never contacted again.

Almost four years ago, she got pregnant. I had assumed, since they’d been together for so long, that what he did to me was an isolated event. I met them to give them a baby shower present. I’d rather have met her alone but I had no time to meet her in Barcelona and she couldn’t drive, so he came along. It was the first time I saw him in years. She left us alone for a while. I asked if the baby was planned. He told me excitedly that it had been a whim after a woman they had just met in a party had told them what a nice couple they were and that they should have children, because some friends of hers had just become parents and it was wonderful. He told me how, when they got home, he picked up a condom an announced it was the last one he was using. He mocked his girlfriend saying “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know” to that, and told me he said “You know what? I’m not using this one either”. And that night she got pregnant. On my 9 months pregnant friend’s mock-indignant words “This one knocked me up!”. I was horrified. I could not understand how they didn’t see how wrong that was. Never met them again. 

Three years ago I saw a picture of the baby doing something cute on Facebook. I hit like without thinking. I had nothing but warm feelings towards the mother. A few days later she wrote a long private message through Facebook saying she needed to cut ties with me because of her baby’s father situation with me. She said I hadn’t wanted to fix things with him when we met last time, and that he came, according to her, so he and I could talk. I was going through a lot: had just lost my job in a project that was practically my creation, had just started managing a store, my husband’s mum was sick with cancer in another town 600 miles away (1000km) and my husband had flown there, and I was left cancelling reservations and calling the guests to our wedding that had been supposed to be in three months from that moment. Less than a week before that message, I had to go to ER because I spent the whole day with tachycardia. So I told her my situation, that I valued her friendship, and I asked to meet later on that month to talk about it. She agreed.

Two days later I was at work, alone, breathing consciously because of my constant anxiety. I got another message from her. It started: “I can’t be friends with someone who thinks my man is a rapist”. I got very angry. I told her I didn’t thought he was, but I knew what he did to me. She talked about it as if it was a lie, when we had both, the three of us actually, existed in a universe where we all agreed it was real. She said he had lost friends because of it. Our common friends that knew what had happened between us had distanced themselves from him, reportedly, because of his new self-centered, party animal, sex-obsessed attitude some time before they knew about the abuses. I’d had enough and I told her so, I told her to solve their own problems without me. I thought I had it all wrapped up, ended my day at work and drove to a seaside town to celebrate a friend’s birthday, the invite to which I had declined because of my recent anxiety attacks. There, I only told the birthday boy the reason of me changing my mind over attending or not. So, when shit happened, he was the only one who guessed where it came from.

I took my phone out to take a picture of our group, but saw the notifications of audio messages from Facebook Messenger, from my abuser. I walked away to listen to them. I was calm, I assumed he’d be apologising. I opened the first one and it was three seconds of silence and then my name in his voice and his tone was furious. My knees gave up, I leaned against a light post and slid down until I sat on the floor. The next words were “I am very indignant. How can you say I am a rapist?”. Then he proceeded to insult me, blame my father of everything, say I was laughing at real rape victims face, accusing me of having raped him… I fell in hysterics and doubted myself. I thought for a moment it was my fault. Now, the birthday boy was the friend my abuser had banned me from having sex with, and he was also one of the two friends that came to see me at work and told me that my ex was saying we were getting back in three months. The other friend was also there. They both knew and they both, when they finally understood what was going on, prevented me from listening to the rest of the audio messages (and more kept coming), and told me I wasn’t imagining things. They told me it happened and they told me I wasn’t a liar. The panic came and went for a long while. I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t look at my friends, more than a half of which didn’t know what happened back then and what was happening now. I ended crying in a friends shoulder saying “I should have strangled him”. This episode kick-started almost 3 years of severe depression and anxiety, unemployment and relationship crisis, from which I’ve been recovering only for the last six or nine months. And, in case you haven’t thought of it, I still was having trouble trusting my sex partner when this happened, so I still needed to reconstruct my identity separated from my sexuality. 

Through 8 years of my adult life, this is something that has been following me, that I’ve tried to manage on my own, and that he has had no remorse in bringing back when his life wasn’t going well. Some time after his audio messages, I learnt that he and his girlfriend were swinging with a couple who I had only met once, being friends of a friend. I asked my common friend to not say anything about my relationship with my abuser and she answered “Too late. He told my friend about everything”. I asked, because I wasn’t sure and I didn’t understand. My friend confirmed that “everything” meant he told my friend’s friend he had been my boyfriend and he had raped me repeatedly. I was puzzled and disgusted. It had just been months since the audios, since him denying it. This friend of a friend is now closer to me and my husband, cut ties with him and has never mentioned it to me.

This last indirect connection with him was about three years ago. I live in a small historic village near Barcelona. As far as I know, my past abuser lives in Barcelona and does not know where I live. Yesterday, I was sitting at a cafe’s terrace with my husband and my dog, telling my husband how amazed I was by the response to the Merlin/Arthur drabble I published earlier this Fictober, being it such an old fandom, when I lifted my head from my phone screen and I saw him, with two more people, in tourist gear. I was wearing big sunglasses, and I stopped talking, hoping he wouldn’t recognise me behind them, but he was looking at me. He looked like he wanted to say hi, and veered towards me. I stammered a bit but kept saying what I was saying to my husband, pointedly looking at my abuser with a very serious face and tone. I waited just for a beat for him to change his mind and stop looking at me, and walk past my table without stopping. I told my husband. He congratulated me on my reaction and offered to get me a second breakfast pastry. 

My abuser passed again near our table with his partners, and this time he didn’t glance at us. I had my heart hammering a hole through my rib cage and I was angry that I had not yelled at him, that I had not hit him, that I had not finished it. Then I realised that, although now I am physically and emotionally exhausted, it is because of the sudden trip back and forth in time and the mental exertion it caused since I am bipolar and hence more sensitive to this things. It was not because I am not over him and what he did. I didn’t had to finish it because it had finished already, sometime in the last three years, and I did it just by investing in myself and my loved ones, just by not having my abuser’s ominous presence obscuring it all. Just by speaking up. Just by avoiding hatred and toxicity and choosing healthy affection, honesty and trust. 

If it happened to you, or is still happening, say it. Say it to your abuser, to the people who loves you, to those who love them. Tell the authorities, tell as many people as you can. Put space between you and the facts, between you and your abuser. The first person you need to help and save is you. Talk to someone, anyone, but don’t shut it down. Don’t keep it hidden because it rots.


End file.
